re-collecting how I've writhed

re-collecting how I’ve writhed
between
impulse and impossibility
I know now
why I called it a crush
and why it still
draws blood from a thirty year old quill
and why it fills
the memoirs of stable women
and married men

for at the time
nothing I did felt
school-boy
if it did
perhaps you would have met
at least one of my glances
instead of seeking
(an)others with your own
or if met
at least received
in the way I could
never show
I intended

but you didn’t
for I couldn’t
or you couldn’t

yet none
or some
certainly not all
of that
brought me
to where I think in sonnets
over the woman
I love
in whose arms I lie
as I re-collect
but no longer
writhe